


pieces of an incomplete puzzle

by hypophrenia



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: OC, Post-Chairman Election Arc, Pre-Dark Continent Arc, Tarot Cards, friendship?, it was SUPPOSED to be a character study but i guess it's not now, major arcana - Freeform, really bad 2am writing i found the next day, second fic yay, there's really nothing to say i just felt the hxh feels early morning, uh what tags am i forgetting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 19:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11675958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypophrenia/pseuds/hypophrenia
Summary: Gon starts and ends everything, and people can't help but get drawn in.(or, a little look into gon's relationships with the other main protagonists.)





	pieces of an incomplete puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is really bad but you can get the gist of it from the tags. more notes at the end to avoid spoilers! hope you enjoy,, inspired by tales of nerdia's videos, check him out: (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrHxoI94pnv6t8-ndG5VjBA)

xix. the sun.

Gon’s always found fortune telling interesting. Once upon a time there was seer on Whale Island who would trace shapes on palms and tell you about what to do and what to avoid.

Gon visited once or twice. She was fond of him, and more than once Gon would find himself sitting down across from her, hand in hers as she told him little things about his future.

 _“You are the sun,”_ she would tell him, voice all low pitched and mysterious. Gon would giggle at her impressions, and she would giggle back.

The fortune teller he stood across from now somehow seemed similar. 

“Would you like your fortune told?” And Gon can sense her nen with the very last dredges of his senses. Her aura was faint, and he had to sharpen his ears and focus around her body to feel the familiar quiet warmth and rush of her nen. She only regarded him with a quiet stare.

“Yes, please.” She sits him down by a table in the corner of a street somewhere in Whale Island, and draws out a worn deck of cards. Gon’s immediate thought was of Hisoka, and he leans over to see her shuffle them.

Her hands are fast, maybe even faster than Hisoka, and the cards fly. Gon watches, his eyes ablaze with sheer enthusiasm and marvel.

He sees her focus her eyes on the deck, felt something surge up around her, and before he could blink five cards were set in front of him. 

“Pick one,” she tells him, her voice velvety smooth. Gon stares and stares until he feels his eyes water.

He selects the middle one, pointing at it. The fortune teller picks it up with a slender hand, and flips it over for Gon to see.

It’s a sun, filling up most of the card, all bright and yellow. There’s even real gold gilding it, letting the sun shine. 

In the little space below the sun, there are flowers, ruby red and ocean blue and silvery, all blooming where the sunlight reaches. Where the sunlight doesn’t, the red flowers are closed, the blue flowers are drooping, and the silver flowers are lying limp on the ground.

Gon stares at it until every detail is burned into his mind. When he looks up at the fortune teller, her face is still shrouded by her cloak, but he can see her mouth now, almost picturesque and perfect looking. It makes her look less human.

“The sun,” she says. It’s not much of an explanation, Gon thinks. “It’s the beginning of life, but also the end.”

“I see.” Gon doesn’t, not as much as Killua or Kurapika would. And he misses them, but he can’t go back anymore, not without his nen. They’re not a part of his world anymore, far beyond what talent he could’ve had.

“The sun brings life and warmth, but it’s also capable of death, scorching and burning in its fury.” The fortune teller thinks for a moment. “The sun is quite selfish sometimes.”

Gon feels uncomfortable when he hears those words, like they’re directed at him somehow. But when he thinks about it, thinks about Killua and his friends, he feels just a bit more sad. He knew what the sun did; it provided fruits and vegetables and beautiful flowers, plentiful and bright, but he had seen people burn under it, crops wilting and fresh earth drying.

If Gon is the sun, then Gon is selfish. He hurt Killua in his pursuit for revenge for Kite, all those days ago. His heart clenches and he wonders what Killua’s doing, how Kurapika is, and if Leorio’s alright.

He wants to ask the fortune teller, who seems to know more than he would. “Excuse me, Miss Fortune Teller?” 

But when he looks up she’s gone, cards and all.

 

viii. strength.

Leorio’s practical. He has to be. Praying to a god or reading his fortune won’t help his patients with their surgeries or amputations; he has to do it himself, and in a sense _he_ is the god who helps them. 

Well, he’s not a doctor yet. He still has school and studying to go through, but being a doctor is his longtime goal and he would die before he gives up on it.

But to Leorio, there’s no god. And even if there was, he would have to pass on it. He had more material things to worry about.

The fortune teller he comes across in the city after a tough day of school seems otherworldly. He doesn’t think much of gods, but the fortune teller has a strong nen aura, and even someone like him who would never reach the nen heights Killua has (or Gon would’ve had) could tell that much.

He’s intrigued. No one seems to notice her, cloaked in dark green and sitting at a wooden table covered with a purple cloth. So he walks over, curious.

“Would you like your fortune told?” she asks him, and Leorio has a bit of spare time so he’s sold. He nods, sits down on the seat across from her, and stares.

She pulls out a deck of cards and with a few quick hand movements they fly with an unimaginable speed in the air, from one hand to the next.

Leorio’s enthralled, and when her fingers move again the cards are back in her hand. He blinks and then there’s five cards, spread out in a straight line.

“Choose one,” she says. Leorio looks at them and his fingers move to the one on the far right corner without thinking. 

With a nod from the fortune teller, he flips it over to reveal a woman holding the mouth of a lion, a crown of blue flowers around her head, red and the occasional silver flowers scattered on the grass floor. The sun shines on the whole scene, and Leorio thinks it’s a beautiful card.

His eyes notice gold and silver and the sparkling flashes of bits of gemstones in the card, and he thinks about how much money the deck could be sold for. But he throws the thoughts away in the darkest part of his mind, and ignores the wealth the card could bring.

“This is strength,” the woman tells him, her voice soft. “Strength brings power, but also passion and love. The sun...the sun…” She seems lost in thought, and Leorio has enough common decency to not say anything.

She looks up again. Her lips purse, but they move back into their curved shape. “Courage, bravery, morality… That is strength.”

She looks at him—or, rather, he imagines she does, since her eyes are hidden and he can only assume from her head tilting up that she is. 

“You are someone strong, who has been through things and survived. Perhaps it is partly by nature of the sun, but you’ve grown and changed so much yet so little.”

Leorio lets her words sit in his mind for a moment, looking at the card. While the woman is the main focus, his eyes still stray to the sunlight highlighting everything, shining so brightly. The gold helps.

He’s somehow reminded of Gon, his smile summery and glowing.

When he looks back at the fortune teller, she’s nowhere to be seen.

 

xiii. death.

Kurapika can’t really bring himself to favor the idea of fortune telling. It just seems too close to some heavenly supreme being. And if there is one, it obviously left him and his clan for dead.

So he believes in science, in logic and everything with proof. But the woman covered in green catches his eye. 

He thinks it’s the nen. Her Ten is solid and strong, and it reminds him of Gon, large and encompassing everything within its reach.

He walks over, and she doesn’t seem surprised to see him. He wouldn’t know, with her cloak covering her face, leaving nothing but her lips out in the waning afternoon light. What is seen of her face is bathed in a warm, orange glow, and he wonders for a brief second who she is.

“Would you like your fortune told?” Kurapika sits down, which is enough of an answer for the both of them, and the woman shuffles her deck of cards.

Kurapika sees some of the patterns and words on the faces of the cards. He recognizes it as Tarot cards, and it makes sense when he thinks about it, someone with a strong nen aura using it for fortune telling.

He sees five cards, all in line and orderly a moment later. He looks at them, and back at the fortune teller.

“Select one.” He looks at them and he does, his hand ghosting over the right second to last card. He hesitates, hand hovering over the card, and looks at the fortune teller.

“Go ahead,” she says in her silky smooth voice, and he flips it over.

A skeleton, riding on a white horse wielding a scythe. There’s flowers, red, threaded through its ribs and arms and legs. Silver and blue flowers wrap around the scythe and lie on the ground, and the sun leaves everything awash in a golden glow.

He recognizes it with a little grimace. “Death, isn’t it?” The fortune teller nods, and Kurapika stares a little harder. It seemed Tarot card reading really did work in the right hands. He killed and he killed and though it was for his clan, he’s still covered in blood and wasted life.

“But,” the fortune teller says, in her soft, not-quite whispered voice, “The death card may not just mean it literally.”

“What do you mean?” Kurapika watches her, sees the slight tilt of her head towards the side.

“Death may mean the passing of life, but it can also mean letting go of things superficial, and return to the basics. To…” She looks off in the distance, and Kurapika wonders where she is. “...enjoy the detours, the little things that matter.”

“The things that matter?” Kurapika knows this, sees this in cheesy poems and romantic ballads meant to appeal to a cliche sense of love and family. But it sounds different from her mouth.

Her head tilts more to the side. “In pursuit of revenge, you’ve lost more than you were left with. In the sunlight you can finally bloom and live again, but out of it you’ve sunk deeper than rock bottom.”

Her words stick in Kurapika’s mind. He opens his mouth, ready to ask a question, but the only thing that’s left of her is her residual nen presence, rapidly fading away.

 

xviii. the moon.

Killua’s never been one for fortune telling. Logic has always been his thing, and even though he understands that with nen, fortune telling is as real as it can be, it’s never really been something he finds himself relying on.

So when Alluka suggests he checks out the fortune teller everyone’s been talking about, he’s not sure whether to take it seriously or not.

He sees a table and a figure clothed in green, and Alluka happily points. They walk over, and the fortune teller raises her head to meet them.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she simply says, directed at Killua. Alluka looks positively glowing, even if she wasn’t the one the fortune teller acknowledged.

“I’ll go wait over there for you!” she exclaims, sitting in a chair a little ways over. Killua makes sure to keep part of his attention there, because Alluka’s always been his first priority, after she went with him and Gon left.

When she sits down, he feels the fortune teller’s gaze on him, even hidden under a hood.

“Who are you?” he asks, and it’s not out of politeness but curiosity of the woman who had a nen aura subtly bolder than anything he’s seen, even compared to Netero’s or Ging’s.

“Gaia,” she simply says. “Number twenty-one.”

Before Killua can say anything about her strange name, the number she presented, or what she could possibly know about him, there’s a worn deck in her hands, shuffled at a speed matching his.

He sees her place five cards in a row, all too fast for a normal person’s eyes to catch. He looks at them, then to her, where he speculates her eyes to be.

She nods, and he chooses the first card, the one to the far left. When he flips it over, his eyes are awash with silver.

A moon stands in the left corner, taking up much of the card up. Under it are flowers blooming in the moonlight, all black and purple. Outside the moonlight is golden light, tiny compared to the moon, but flowers red and blue and silver bloom under it.

He looks at the sun until the gold highlights burn into his eyes. The fortune teller speaks in a voice smooth and soft.

“The moon, quiet and gentle. Perhaps not as flashy as the sun, but still loved.” She pauses, her head moving down to where the card is. “Four cards, for the four.” Her words are like an afterthought, but Killua focuses on them anyway.

“There are five cards.” He feels the same eyes on him again. “Why would you put five?”

“Four is not a terribly lucky number, is it?” Killua supposes he has to take that for an answer, but his curiosity rises again.

“What are the four?” Gaia raises a hand and places it on the first card on the very right. She flips it over, continuing in order.

“Strength.” Killua feels something in his throat tighten. “Death.” The thing rises. “The sun.” His ears fill with blood, rushing. She skips the card next to that, before reaching the last. “The moon.”

Killua’s smart. He knows with every bit of logic and intellect he has who the people are. His eyes stay with the sun, and his heart clenches.

“The moon cannot exist without the sun, and the sun will always be your light. You cannot always be without him, and perhaps you know as much.” Killua, through the dizziness in his mind, vaguely wonders when Killua became the moon and when _he_ became the sun. He brushes away the feeling, his eyes rising to where he _knows_ Gaia’s is.

She gives him a stare that seems to see right through him, to the very core of his nen. Her words are quiet but carry a power beyond anything Killua’s seen, and he’s battled the strongest things alive and fought death with his bare hands.

“Where,” Gaia says, her hands clasped, her chocolatey voice heavy with the bitterness of ground coffee beans, “Is your sun?” And Killua feels something build up in him, like the quiet waves lapping at the cliffs on Whale Island all pushing up against his heart. His words slip through his mouth and he can’t feel anything but sorrow and regret for a moment after.

“My sun…” A look at the horizon, where Ging is and where Gon stopped. “Is not mine anymore.”

**Author's Note:**

> alright as promised here's a bunch of stuff you're not going to read,,
> 
> kurapika's arcana: i was conflicted between death and judgement, but i ultimately chose death because it makes my boy edgier and also because i thought the meaning on wikipedia fit better
> 
> failed character study: i really wanted it to be a character study but that didn't work out as much, because i'm not as deep as i'd like to be. but i think i got the characters pretty decently! have i mentioned togashi is literally a god his characters are so interesting and i'm sullying his writing oh my gOD
> 
> the unmentioned card: i was thinking either the magician for hisoka or the fool for ging but i cut it out because they both weren't at the same level of main character as the main four so yeah
> 
> the really obvious metaphors: i mean, silver flowers/the moon for killua, blue flowers for leorio, red flowers for kurapika, the sun for gon.... i'm not very good at writing subtly my bad,, most of my descriptions for the tarot cards are based on the ones on the wikipedia page
> 
> uh yeah that's all i think. hope this was good enough for our lord and savior togashi and of course anyone that reads my trash!!


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